Agatha The Legendary Guild Master

They thought I was hit or injured, however despite I wasn't, my face told them how bad my mood was!

'Diana, Nina, Rendy, you three come to me now!'

The three weren't here, so I sent in the chat for them to appear. In less than half an hour, the three were gathered in front of me, with worried expressions on their faces.

My face was extremely grim, and despite the army going to the front, continuing advancing, I didn't move a single step from here.

I needed to figure out everything before setting a single foot forward!

"Princess, are you alright?" Diana asked with her usual worried face.

"Sure, but there is something I wanted to ask about," I then turned towards the ruins of the forte behind my back, as I pointed to it and asked:

"Are there other fortes like this one at layers ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty five?"

The three exchanged glances, before Nina replied:

"There is nothing like that remaining right now in these places, however the furthest place we managed to reach ever in our history is layer twenty four, so I don't know anything regarding layer twenty five."

"What about forts of the old?" I asked, "Fortes were known to be the hearts of these layers, proved to be really hard to conquer, and took a huge amount of effort for the mystic art masters and players to conquer them back at that time."

I tried to explain further what I was asking about, and from the expression on their faces I knew they already knew what I was talking about.

"So?! Someone already says something!" I was extremely nervous right now, as I hated facing something I knew nothing about.

"Princess, there were fortes like this one scattered in many sacred lands, and they were long being conquered by the masters of. Why do you ask about them right now?" Diana asked, as she didn't understand my reasons.

I just replied with a glaring threatening look from me, warning them if not they soon spoke up. "There was a forte at layer ten. This forte had the ability to change the surrounding terrain into a lava world, where many small demons would pop out in large numbers. When every single one of them would be killed, more would respawn, much stronger than the previous ones, until the whole wave ended up with giant lava demons, equaling an army of your demon."

Diana spoke at once, narrating the story she knew of.

"As for me, I heard a story about the forte of the fifteen layer, I love this one. It said that an invisible fog would dissipate from this forte, affecting everyone around it to kill each other, until they all would be killed," Nina said, while her face showed an amusing look, totally opposite to the brutality of these words of hers.

"As for me, I heard the twenty layer had a very hard to conquer forte, where it would summon an abyss, and monsters, typhoons, plus many natural disasters would kick in, wreaking havoc on every single army surrounding the forte. Plus there is another demon that resembles your own, very strong, with many artifacts, guarding this forte."

Rendy also said his own knowledge about that forte.

"The giant barbaric, I heard scary stories about it when I was a child!" Nina added.

"Yes, it was very famous in ancient days of being a rock that smashed many armies over it," Diana added, before turning to me, noticing my pallor, as she asked:

"Anything wrong, princess?"

I want to curse their bad tongue right now! However, I just sighed, as I had to accept that a cornered injured beast was very terrifying indeed.

"Sigh, these fortes would all come back to life, and all these disasters would appear again!"

"No way!" they all replied in the same breath. "Who told you that? the game?" Nani hurriedly asked, with disbelief more than fear.

"When I was attacking the forte here, my demon had sensed the calling, something was trying to control him. however as they didn't have time to finish their preparations, and my sudden appearance here made them haste many steps, they couldn't control him in the end."

"They?!" Diana asked.

"The nobles! The mystic art master from the nobles!"

My short reply silenced them all, as they now realized why I was so grim when they came to meet me, why I was so paled when hearing the freaking frightening stories of old.

We would have to face all these terrors, and our path to the mystic art society sacred land had become more challenging, roughly impossible.

"How can we face these fortes alone without any master?" Nina muttered with disbelief and terror.

"Can't we hurry and cut their retreat path? Stop them before they could do such a thing?" Rendy asked, trying to cure the problem from its roots.

"It's hard now," I desperately shook my head, "we are many days delayed than them already, plus I'm pretty sure these masters would have long gone using balloons to hasten things. What happened here proved they only lacked time to succeed, and they wouldn't stop at anything to complete their preparations, so they could retreat with much ease of mind."

It was always said that the best to understand you was your arch enemy. Right now I understood their minds better than anyone else, and so I was so sure of my assumptions, as they matched their dirty minds.

The looks over their faces showed how desperate they were. I sighed, as I didn't call them here to scare them off, but to think with them. it seemed I had to find a way on my own, as they weren't ready yet to face such disasters.

"Don't panic, I'm sure the game wouldn't let us face such trouble alone," I said, trying to raise their morale, before adding, "plus we also aren't weak. We have endless players on our side, and the points we are amassing will help to summon many players from the stele. So, we aren't out of options."